South Australia is now host to one of the world's most sophisticated plant research centres.
Based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus, the A$30m facility, known as ‘The Plant Accelerator', is the largest and most advanced of its kind, Newswise.com reported.
The super greenhouse will feature 50 glasshouses and laboratories with more than 1km of conveyor systems which will deliver plants automatically to state-of-the-art imaging, robotic and computing equipment.
This will allow the measurement of the physical attributes of up to 160,000 plants a year.
The facility's key strength comes in its ability to quickly identify those varieties that will be successful, reducing the time taken to breed new varieties and speeding up their eventual delivery to farmers.
The Plant Accelerator was jointly funded by the Commonwealth, South Australian Government and the University of Adelaide, with additional support from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics.
University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Professor James McWha said the facility would lead research into crops that can tolerate drought, high salinity and disease.
'This facility is an Australian first and is world class in every respect. It will improve international efforts to cultivate sustainable crops, as well as providing a competitive edge for Australia's A$28bn annual agriculture export industry,' he said.
'This facility will further raise the national and international prominence of the Waite Campus as a centre for excellence in plant science, genomics and breeding research.'
Professor Mark Tester, director of the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility which is housed at the centre, said it would provide exciting opportunities for Australian scientists.
'We are confident that research conducted using this facility will lead to major discoveries that hold the key to solving some of the world's greatest problems in food production and hence food security, particularly in the face of climate change,' he said.
'It has already attracted much interest among local and international companies looking to forge research partnerships and we're very excited about the collaborative opportunities that are emerging.'
